


he sleeps like a temple to no god

by Guts



Category: Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-10
Updated: 2012-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-18 08:24:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guts/pseuds/Guts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's taken to calling you 'grandmother'. You've taken to gnashing your teeth at him.<br/>The sun sets outside, but here it seems leaves gather and they lie with your hopes all in a pile.<br/>And here Howl comes with the broom and his freshly dyed hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	he sleeps like a temple to no god

**Author's Note:**

> Imagine the castle was still there and Calcifer was still there and I ruin everything because I want to write about this for five seconds. And imagine Howl wears turquoise pants. Stop pretending, I know you can see it.

On the third month of you being in howls grand, magnificent, dust collecting castle, more widely known as the moving crumshack as both you and calcifer have had a falling out with his magnificent horses rear, Howl begins looking at you.

And, yes he’s always seen you.

But he begins to consider you, speak to you. On some occasions he has looked at you wisely (a great feat for that silly boy) and asked your opinions in his personal affairs. 

You assume he has a mother complex of some sort. 

 

“Mother!” he says over lunch, he’s dropped by and promptly thrown twelve pairs of turquoise trousers with torn knees and ripped seams on the ground.

“What HAVE you done to them, Howl?” you sigh, collecting them and placing the first pair on your knees to examine the work to be done.

“A wizard has to pay the prices for being magnificent.” He sniffs, but turns to you again almost in time to catch your eye roll to Calcifer.

 

“Mother, have you been spelling your hair with my dyes? It’s looking much darker.”

 

You glower at him a moment and turn your hand through it.  
Its in your thick braid and the frizzed ends catch at your palm. You catch a curl and pull it out, it’s a dark grey.  
“Don’t be silly.” You say and return to your work.

But Howls tin blue eyes follow your line of sight and glint sharp as the needle when you begin your work.  
“Be off with you!” you say belligerently, and embarrassed.

He bows, says adieu to Markl and washes through the door in a swirl of jasmine scent and the slap of his satin coat on your face.

 

“Dimwit.” You snarl to your sewing.  
The pants, to your pleasure, seem to agree.

 

In the early morning when Howl has either not been home yet or has already gone, you get up and begin your ritual.  
It has fallen to you journeying to the bathroom, where howl has already striped and seemingly thrown dye everywhere. You would swear to a stranger that the porcelain tub is white when you finish cleaning it, that you do clean it! But with two young wizards, one ever changing his wizard hair…well, there is no white on the tub anymore, suffice to say. Work for the afternoon.

You splash your face and tear and stretch at your face. 

Sometimes you feel you need reassurance that you were once a twenty year old women with no prospects and dirt colored hair.

You’ve no idea why, but you do.  
Sometimes you can pull your face to a state where you almost see yourself, but it disappears like dim water.

The mirror only shows your soft, wrinkled skin and the growing slack of your mouth. The work to be done in the bathroom, the spit stains of paste on its reflection. 

 

You are careful to hide your bad habits, and it must be said, your worse ones.

When you were young ( four months, twelve days ago), you would bite at your nails but be careful to wear gloves.

And now in your old age, you take comfort in the pipe every once in a while.

The tobacco Howl keeps is rich and cloistering, it reminds you of your father and the males visiting your little hat shop for presents to their mistresses, Lettie or mothers. 

 

How you miss the little hat shop! Every inch festooned with racks of color, every inch useful and warm.  
If you could speak of your spell, it would be in horrible tones. So you are quite glad you cannot!

But your bad habit makes it seem closer, somehow. You sit at the tub and open the window and try to blow large smoke rings. You fall into your memories, and you remember the quietness, the steady warmth from the window as you worked on hats. 

You laugh when you think of what your mother or Lettie would say. Well, not so much say, but how they would look!  
You are sure they would both fall dead on the cobblestones, their faces sick and in horror.  
“Oh Sophie!” Lettie would admonish, pitying you.

 

You are interrupted by Howl at the door. He is laughing at you. His hair is green and just above his shoulders, it makes him look handsome, if not very sickly. 

He nearly makes your heart jump out of your chest and you tell him so in angry tones.  
“Granny! What kind of sweet grandmother sneaks smokes in the wee hours!?” he says to you, tired eyed and sleepy, his shoulder resting at the inside of the door.  
“The best kind, that’s who.” You say grumpily at him and blow a smoke ring at him to spite him.

He laughs all the more and comes to sit beside you.

“Leave off!” you say, turning your nose up. “ This is my time!”

“And it is my castle!” he says back, snottily and you do concede at that. You even curb your tongue when he takes the pipe from you and puffs at it good naturedly. 

He blows a little. smoke Markl, you don’t know how, wizards and all that.  
The little Markl gives a bow and puffs out the window. 

Outside the castle is still, and a clank or thud sounds every couple minutes. 

Howl smokes quietly beside you. The tub bites on the underside of your legs.  
The bones threading your back ache and you rub at them, sulkily. 

“The days not even started and you are already sore from work, Sophie!” Howl teases, smiling. 

“It is hard to be so old.” You grumble and he gets up, still chuckling.

You think he says something on his way out, but you don’t have the ears you once did.

 

As you stub out the tobacco and stow the pipe on top of the mirror you brush past the mirror and gasp.  
For a second you could swear you saw dirt hair and mud eyes and skin the color of the sun setting on the clouds.

You must be mistaken.

 

When you are young again and your hair looks like the clouds in the bright day, and life has been untangled, he puts his arms around your waist and hugs you.

His face is pressed against the smoothness of your new stomach and the newness of your nightgown on your arms and legs and neck makes you feel you are in another’s skin.

“I missed you, granny.” He speaks to you, the buzz of his voice tickling your ribs.

You consider smacking him across his head for the name, but don’t.

You kiss his head and hold him, the newly auburn hairs of his head splaying on your nightgown.  
You have just woken up, but you are quite sure he has always been awake. Or, at least, for a good time before you.

 

“I’ve always been here, howl.” You say. But you cannot get used to your own voice without the burr, the rough strain of age. You catch yourself asking whose talking when you lecture markl. 

His hands find your hips and they clutch you to him.

“Sophie.’ He says, from where he’s buried in you.

“What happens? Now, I mean. I am so used to moving, I am not used to having so heavy a chest. Wouldn’t you rather a husband who sells your hats and wears them, as well?”  
You curl around him and tell him,

 

“I make women’s hats, darling. “

He does not speak but you pull him upwards, and tangle your legs in his and hold his hands in your own. 

You fall asleep as the rain starts and the castle clanks back at it.

**Author's Note:**

> TITLE: http://www.kuorinki.com/works/wall-piece-with-200-letters-kiasma/


End file.
